Run, Paul Ryan: This Is Your Moment

With Mitch Daniels out, the GOP needs a "wonk on a white horse" to save the day and defend the party's vision on entitlement reform and spending cuts, writes Jonah Goldberg. The likeliest candidate should have been Newt Gingrich, but he first attacked Paul Ryan's Medicare plan then "spent the last week walking back his statements with all the grace of the barnyard dog stepping on a field of garden rakes in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons," writes Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times.

Which leads to the inevitable question: Why not Ryan? "If the election is going to be a referendum on his plan, maybe the one guy who can sell it should get in the race." Eric Cantor thinks so, and he's only the latest big name to float the idea." It's asking a big personal sacrifice of Ryan, and the fundraising logistics are daunting. "But politics is about moments, and this one is calling him. Unless someone suddenly rises to the challenge, the cries of 'Help us, Paul Ryan, you're our only hope!' will only get louder." (More Paul Ryan stories.)